Bend's Second Act: From Mill Town to Mountain Town

In nineteen eighty three, when the last great sawmill closed on the Deschutes, Bend had a population of about seventeen thousand people and no clear answer to what would replace six decades of lumber income. Over the following four decades, it found the answer in the mountains, rivers, and desert around it. Mount Bachelor, a dormant volcanic cone rising about nine thousand feet about eighteen miles southwest of downtown, had been a ski destination since the late nineteen fifties.

It offered one of the longest ski seasons in the Pacific Northwest, with runs often open into June and a summit that caught reliable Cascade snowfall. As the timber economy faded, the ski resort became one of the few anchors of the local economy. From that base, Bend methodically built an outdoor recreation identity.

The Deschutes River running through downtown offered kayaking, paddleboarding, and world class fly fishing for wild trout. Smith Rock drew climbers from across the country. The network of forest and desert trails became a mountain biking destination with a national reputation.

A cluster of craft breweries grew to more than twenty in a city of Bend's size, and the Bend Ale Trail became part of the town's identity in its own right. By the twenty tens and twenty twenties, Bend was regularly named among the fastest growing cities in Oregon and the most desirable places to live in the western United States. The population that hovered around seventeen thousand in nineteen eighty three had grown to well over one hundred thousand.

The mill town had become a mountain town, and people were moving there on purpose.